Steve Case’s firm backs office sharing startup Loosecubes

The investment firm created by AOL-founder Steve Case, Revolution, has invested in office sharing site Loosecubes. Case discussed the investment at GreenBiz’s Verge conference on Friday and a spokesperson for the firm told me the size of the investment has not been disclosed.

Loosecubes is a website that enables companies to rent out office space and extra desks by the day — think of it like the Airbnb for offices. The startup is part of the growing trend of collaborative consumption, or using the web and mobile to help people share “stuff,” like cars (Zipcar or Getaround), apartments (Airbnb) or even dogs (Dog Vacay).

Case, through Revolution, has pioneered the web-sharing economy, and has invested in car sharing company Zipcar and luxury home sharing company Exclusive Resorts. At the Verge conference Case explained how car sharing couldn’t exist without the Internet and cell phones: “it’s only possible because of the first Internet revolution.”

Collaborative consumption also has a sustainability and efficiency aspect — if more people and workers share office space, less buildings will be built. Essentially the sharing economy is about more efficiently using resources, which is something that a world of 9 billion by 2050 will need to embrace.

Loosecubes is also part of another trend: a distributed workforce and more people embracing co-working. Deskmag has found that there are more than 1,100 coworking spaces worldwide, more than double the number in 2006. Investors, beyond Revolution, are putting money into new co-working spaces like New York based General Assembly, which raised $4.25 million from Yuri Milner of DST Global.